# Load external configuration files with autodiscover
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044
**Category:** Beats
**Tags:** metricbeat
**Created:** [December 9, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044 "2018-12-09T12:50:23Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hamid.haghshenas](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hamid.haghshenas)
#### Post date: [December 9, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044/1 "2018-12-09T12:50:23Z")
I'm going to monitor Docker Swarm containers using Metricbeat, which is itself a Swarm service. I've heard that I should use [autodiscover](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/configuration-autodiscover.html) instead of using modules directly.
Say I want to monitor services running uWSGI and PHP-FPM. Is it required to copy all contents of modules.d/uwsgi.yml and modules.d/php\_fpm.yml in metricbeat.yml like below?
```auto
metricbeat.autodiscover:
providers:
- type: docker
templates:
- condition:
contains:
docker.container.image: my_python_app
config:
# Paste contents of uwsgi.yml here
- condition:
contains:
docker.container.image: my_php_app
config:
# Paste contents of php_fpm.yml here
```
But this seems to end in a large metricbeat.yml file. Is there a way to use separate config files with autodiscover, like when we used modules directly?
---
### Author:  [@ruflin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ruflin)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2018, 1:29pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044/2 "2018-12-10T13:29:56Z")
Currently you need all the configs in this file. One solution to solve this is using hint based autodiscovery: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/configuration-autodiscover-hints.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/beats/metricbeat/current/configuration-autodiscover-hints.html) But to be honest I haven't tried of this works on Docker Swarm.
---
### Author:  [@hamid.haghshenas](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/hamid.haghshenas)
#### Post date: [December 10, 2018, 3:00pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044/3 "2018-12-10T15:00:55Z")
To use this solution, I need to config my Metricbeat by labeling Docker containers, right?
The idea itself is not bad and can be interpreted as annotating containers for metering.
Thanks again.
---
### Author:  [@ruflin](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ruflin)
#### Post date: [December 13, 2018, 8:20am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044/4 "2018-12-13T08:20:24Z")
Exactly.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2019, 8:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/load-external-configuration-files-with-autodiscover/160044/5 "2019-01-10T08:33:34Z")
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